Look What It Got Her
by Thessily Thessilonikki
Summary: Petunia is jealous, and she'd never admit it to anyone.


**Title:** Look What It Got Her

**Author: **Julie   
**Pairing:** James/Lily; one-sided James/Petunia  
**Rating:** PG  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters therein. Which means Petunia and Lily Evans, and James Potter are not mine. Dammit. I envy JK Rowling, I do. Probably contains spoilers.  
**Summary:** Petunia is jealous.  
**Notes:** The brilliant idea came to me while I was sitting at work, and listening to Order of the Phoenix. I just hope that this works. From Petunia's POV, inspired by where she say she heard "that boy" telling Lily about Dementors.

**Look What It Got Her**

If I were truly to be jealous of someone, the last person I could have imagined to cause it would be her. Not that I could ever admit to jealous – no, never that.

And maybe, it didn't start with him, that boy, either. Maybe it started before that. Our parents always liked her better, you know. Oh, she's so beautiful. She has such lovely green eyes, such thick, gorgeous red hair. She's so talented, so sweet, so nice.

Why can't you be more like your sister?

But I couldn't be like her. I didn't have the pretty red hair; mine was dull and brown and never quite fixed the way I wanted it to. I couldn't be like her because I didn't have those jewel-bright, green eyes; I had only my own pale blue. I wasn't pretty like her, because my face was too pale, and not pretty pale like hers, but pale, and spotty. She was perfect, never a spot or a splotch on her pretty face her entire life. I couldn't be like her, because she was slender and beautiful, and curved in all the places boys liked, and I was just built like the boys.

I wasn't a freak, either.

Not that that was what our parents considered her to be, but that's what she was, going to that freak school with all those other freak kids. A witch, can you imagine? And they were proud, oh so proud, and I was disgusted, ashamed that she could be so great, and be involved with the thing they called magic.

I hated her for going there, for leaving me alone, even though I hated her at the same time for being prettier, and more popular.

Then she brought home that boy. That horrible freak boy. The boy that I wanted to hate, and at the same time, simply wanted. I wanted him, wanted to steal him from her. He was so handsome, with his unkempt hair, his hazel eyes, the man lurking beneath the surface of the boy. I wanted him for myself, but I was no competition for her.

I watched him kiss her once. I'd been engaged a month, was to be wed the next year, to Vernon. But Vernon was not James. He was round and blonde and his face would spot red when he was worked up, and he sweated when he kissed me. But James did not. I watched him kiss my sister, warm red lips closing over her glossy pink ones, his dark lashes fanning down over tanned cheeks, and I wished with all my might that he was kissing me.

But he wasn't.

They went back to freak school, and I became Mrs. Vernon Dursley. I carried a child, and I lost it, and my Lily graduated from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Her graduation was more important than my lost child. It was a daughter.

She married him in the fall, a beautiful wedding, with the leaves changing colour and matching her hair, done up in a crown of deep red braids, tendrils trailing down her pale, bared neck and over her white wedding robes. Robes, wizard's robes. He stood beside her the whole time, wearing his own set of red-and-gold trimmed black robes, with his mates to the sides of them. There was Sirius, his best mate, best man, with his long, unkempt hair. He made Lily scream with laughter when he snatched her up in his arms and pretended to carry her away, put her on his motorcycle and fly away. And there was Peter, who reminded me too much of Vernon, with his pudgy face and thin blond hair. I couldn't look at him without my stomach turning, twisting round my secret desire to have James, gorgeous James. He hugged Lily, and she smiled brightly, kissed him on both cheeks and made him blush. And lastly, Remus, who was so sad and beautiful standing with them that I almost changed my mind and deserted James in my fantasies and Vernon in my life

But I didn't. Time passed. Things started happening, and I never saw my little sister anymore. That didn't bother me at all. I didn't like her, hated the sick jealousy that filled me whenever she was near. But not seeing my sister, I did not see James, did not see his handsome face or hear his laugh as I did my wifely duties. I so wanted a child to fill the empty space that my husband could never hope to come near to.

It took us three years, but I was finally able to announce that I was going to have a baby, and I was determined to have this one. I went to more checkups than necessary, I'm sure, but I was going to have my child.

Yet Lily couldn't even allow me to delight in that, for when I celebrated Christmas at my parents that year, the phone rang in the middle of dinner. My sister, dear Lily, calling from France, telling our parents that she was pregnant, less than a month behind myself. I was furious. Angry that she should ruin my pleasure at my own, jealous that she would have James's child.

Dudley was born at the beginning of July, a perfect, gorgeous baby. Everything I had ever dreamt of, with blond hair, and blue eyes, perfect, tiny features. All overshadowed when Harry was born at the close of the month. A miniature of James, every tiny inch more perfect than my own Dudley. I hated the child, as I hated his mother, and at the same time, I wanted him to be mine, wanted him as my own child, the way I wanted James as my husband.

That Christmas was the last I saw my sister. I remember how she and James came to our parents, and the hollowed out, frightened look that was on both of their faces as they sat near the fire, talking softly with my mother, Lily cradling baby Harry in her arms as my mother looked on, tracing a finger down tiny clenched fists. She never looked on Dudley in such a way, Dudley who was already beginning to have pudgy cheeks. My beautiful Dudley. I looked from him to Harry in that moment, and my child was more beautiful, and more perfect, with perfectly groomed blond hair, instead of the messy unkempt thatch that crowned my sister's baby. He wasn't pale, wasn't wrapped in a dirty, fraying blanket. I am convinced that I was more beautiful than Lily for the first time in my life, because motherhood did not seem to agree with her.

I felt superior then. I wasn't a freak like her, and I was secure and safe with my husband. Even if I still desired Lily's.

And Christmas was the last time I saw him as well.

We celebrated Dudley's first birthday at my parents, and there were plans for Harry's, but Lily and James never showed. They never called our parents. My mother paced about our home the night they were to arrive, yet never once did they contact us, visit us.

And in October…

I remember it vividly, the doorbell ringing at an ungodly hour, and Vernon rolling out of bed, grunting and going downstairs. I trailed after him, tying my robe on over my nightgown. He opened the door and looked out, but there was no one there. Then we looked down.

Wrapped in a blanket and lying on my porch was my sister's child, sleeping, his hair matted with blood and a jagged cut on his perfect forehead. I bent and took him into my arms, a child barely more than a year old, and I hated him, so much, because he represented everything I could never, ever have.

And now, when I look at him, sixteen years old, pale and drawn and frightened, yet determined, so very, very determined and strong, I see his father. I see the man that I wanted so very long. Harry looks at me with those jewel-bright, green eyes, and I hate him, because I see my sister, see the freak that she was, and the freak that her son is, and hate him for being everything I never had.

Simply because I had the misfortune to be Petunia, and not Lily.

And for a long time, I wanted to be Lily, wanted to have James.

But look what being Lily got her.


End file.
